**Date:** 1905  
**Source:** Lenin Miscellany, vol. 26  
**Pages:** 20-22

37Î7D

Dear An[atoly] Vas[ilyevich]! Yesterday I sent you a "business" letter and asked you to send Iskra No. 105* and Plekhanov's L. Feuerbach. Today I want to have a conversation outside of current affairs.

Poor morale among our people in Geneva. I am often amazed at how little it takes for people who are not entirely self-reliant and unaccustomed to independent political work to lose heart and turn sour. And our Geneva Bolsheviks are souring terribly. The struggle is serious; the 3rd Congress has by no means ended it, of course, but only opened a new phase of it. The Iskra people are mobile and fussy, unscrupulous in a merchant-like way, schooled by long experience in demagogy—whereas ours are dominated by a kind of "conscientious stupidity" or "stupid conscientiousness." They cannot fight themselves, they are clumsy, immobile, ungainly, timid... Dear fellows, but damned useless as politicians. They lack tenacity, they lack the fighting spirit, dexterity, speed. Vas[ily] Vas[ilyevich] is extremely typical in this regard: the kindest person, the most devoted worker, the most honest man—I fear he will never be capable of becoming a politician. He is too kind—I can hardly believe the "Galerkin" pamphlets were written by him. He brings no fighting spirit either to the organ (he is always sorry that I don't let him write kind articles about the Bund!) or to the colony. Some kind of spirit of whining reigns, and they (I am at the dacha for only three weeks and travel to the city for 4–5 hours, three or even four times a week!) reproach me that their work is not going well, that the Mensheviks are more vigorous, etc., etc.!!

2.

2. VIII 1905. [Geneva]

They say the leading article is desperate nonsense! Won't you write something against it soon? If yes, telegraph.¹

And our C.C.,² for one thing, is also not much of a "politician," too kind as well, suffering from a lack of tenacity, resourcefulness, sensitivity, an inability to exploit politically every trifle in party struggle. And, for another thing, he contemptuously dismisses the foreign lands and stubbornly refuses to allow all the best people here or takes them away from here. And we find ourselves here, abroad, lagging behind. What is lacking is ferment, impulses, drives. People cannot act and fight on their own. There is a lack of speakers at their own meetings. There is no one to instill a spirit of vigor, to raise the question in principle, to be able to lift things above the Geneva swamp to a higher level, into the realm of more serious interests and questions. And the entire work suffers. In political struggle, a halt is death. There are endless requests and they keep growing. The new-Iskra people do not sleep (now they have even "intercepted" the sailors who arrived in Geneva, luring them, probably with their characteristic merchant-like advertising in politics and vigorously marktschreien,* "utilizing" retroactively the Odessa events for the benefit of their coterie). We have impossibly few forces. Vas[ily] Vas[ilyevich]—I don't know when he will write, and as an orator and political center he is below all criticism; rather, he himself encourages whining than to shake people up and give them a pedagogical scolding. Schwartz³ is absent: he writes from there diligently and well, even seemingly better than he does here, but only writes. And to exert personal influence on people and to know how to direct the public and meetings, he is rarely capable even when he is in Geneva. There is a large, serious center here. A mass of Russians. Countless people coming.⁴ Summer is an especially active moment, because from the vast number of Russian tourists flooding into Geneva, there is a certain percentage of people whom one must and can use, shake up, attract, direct.

Think about all this and write me in greater detail (better to my personal address: 3, Rue David Dufour). Remember, you wrote: there will be no harm from my absence from Geneva because I write a lot and from afar.⁴ That is true—you write a lot, and one can manage the newspaper in a half-hearted way (but no more than half-heartedly, and we damnably need more). But there *is* harm—not only harm, but enormous harm, which becomes clearer with every day. Personal influence and appearing at meetings in politics means an awful lot. Without them there is no political activity, and even writing itself becomes less political. And when the adversary has large forces at his disposal abroad, we lose every week what we might not make up in a month. The struggle for the party has not ended, and you cannot bring it to a real victory without straining all your forces...

I press your hand. Your N. Lenin.

¹ The leading article in Iskra No. 105 of July 28 (July 15) 1905—"Is this not the beginning of a turning point." A critique of this article was given in A. V. Lunacharsky's article "They Justified Neither Hopes Nor Fears" in No. 13 of *Proletariat* of August 22, 1905.

² Members of the C.C. in Russia: A. A. Bogdanov, L. B. Krasin, D. S. Postolovsky, and P. P. Rumyantsev.

³ Schwartz (V. V. Borovsky) was in Berlin on party business throughout August, September, and part of October.

⁴ Lunacharsky's letter (arch. IMEL No. 302) is not dated, but judging from the fact that Lunacharsky cites in it a Plekhanov pamphlet dated July 20, and Lenin's reply to this letter is written on August 2, Lunacharsky's letter can be approximately dated to July 22–29, 1905.